This issue is at the heart of many homes and people may not even realise it.
Social media networking companies need to wake up and realise that our young generation are hearing and seeing things on social media that they may not be equipped to handle at such a young age.
ALL social networking companies should raise their age restriction to 18 and over.
I believe all social networking companies should be fined for not doing enough to discourage children from the age of 13 (and sometimes younger) to join social networking sites without proof of age. Before anyone can open a new account, passport information could be requested at the time of joining or some other form of identification. This would confirm the age of the person joining, it would deter children from being able to use the platform and stop fraudulent or cloned accounts from being generated. People already on the platform can be advised that they need to supply that information to continue using the account.
With the kind of money these companies make, I am sure they can think of something to ensure we stamp out underage use.
As a parent myself, I do not understand how all the major social media sites have not addressed this problem yet.
We live in a world of cyber bullying and it takes place on these sites. I myself have reported disgusting pictures, hate speech and violent videos of children being beaten up by gangs of other children. If a young child views these kind of images/videos, they cannot be unseen. It’s too late, we are allowing children to easily access the dark world of the net.
All too often we hear of children taking their own lives because of online bullying. In reality, when a child is being bullied at such a young tender age, they are not capable of handling that type of situation so they should not be online in the first place.
Why are we not doing enough to discourage children from using these sites and make these companies show a duty of care to our young generation?
Let’s face it, most adults have experienced difficult encounters on social media. Can you imagine what it must be like for a child or young adult to have to deal with that at such a young age?
Children DO NOT have the experience or knowledge of how to deal with something that might start out as something very trivial, that turns into something bigger, serious and unmanageable.
We need to acknowledge that it is our responsibility to ensure that we restrict access to social media for our youngsters. If we fail to do this, we are directly placing them in this situation in the first place.
Please, if you feel strongly about this and you too believe we need to keep our children and younger generation safe, I urge you to click here and sign our petition. Let’s make a change today:
https://www.change.org/p/facebook-enforce-all-social-media-platforms-to-raise-age-restriction-to-18
